Re: [wm-dev] Development status?

On Thursday 27 April 2006 20:52, Sean wrote:
> Dan Pascu wrote:
> > Bug fixes and patches will be generally accepted unless there isn't a
> > very obvious problem with their approach or implementation.
> > Enhancements can also be accepted if they do not fall in the
> > "creeping featurism" category. If someone has some improvement idea
> > and would like to implement it it would be better to describe it on
> > wm-dev and ask for opinions before jumping to implement it just to
> > find out that we do not agree with some of it.
>
> I like the idea that you do not want to fall into the "creeping
> featurism" category.
>
> But to easily allow others to add features for whatever reason, without
> having to do anything to the code base, could a plug-in or extension
> method be created similar to for example Firefox or Thunderbird?

We can look at firefox to see what this system produced. While firefox 
itself is written considering a certain quality level, the many plugins 
that float around are not. They do not benefit from the same level of 
auditing as firefox itself and they are more often than not buggy or 
unmaintained.
Currently they create a much worse impresion of firefox than it deserves 
and given that you can do any fancy stuff you can imagine with plugins 
they are perceived as more exciting and interesting than firefox itself. 
So in the end they are the ones that produce the overall impression of 
the browser. You can search yourself and see how many people report that 
their problems go away as soon as they disable extensions in firefox.

While I can see the benefits of a plugin system, I certainly do not want 
to get Window Maker to be perceived as a crappy product of a low quality 
because there are tons of badly written plugins floating around.

That being said, after 1.0.0 is released, the next generation of window 
maker will be designed to be modular, so external modules will be 
possible.


-- 
Dan
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